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The underpainter
 
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The underpainter (Unknown Binding)

by Jane Urquhart (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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1 new from £21.00 13 used from £1.89 1 collectible from £27.14
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover £14.99 £14.24 17 used & new from £0.75
Paperback (New edition) £6.99 £6.29 81 used & new from £0.01

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Product details

  • Unknown Binding: 340 pages
  • Publisher: M&S (1997)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0771086644
  • ISBN-13: 978-0771086649
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,725,727 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
Jane Urquhart's The Underpainter is a very modern novel preoccupied with the power of the past. Austin Fraser, born in 1894, is a modernist who relentlessly paints over his canvases, much as he tries to eradicate people from his life. Though he insists that he has forgone emotion and love, when he receives news of a women he once knew, he can no longer stop memories from encroaching. Urquhart's novel ranges from late-century Rochester, New York, on to Ontario then Paris and New York City. Not since Patrick White's The Vivisector have there been such disturbing scenes of the painter in action: "I believed that I was drawing-- literally drawing--everything out of her, that his act of making art filled the space around me so completely there would be no other impressions possible beyond the ones I controlled." Intriguingly, by exposing Fraser's emptiness, Urquhart makes us pity him. Though she has said that she was "quite angry with Austin" while writing The Underpainter, the author's language incises his reluctant humanity and turns his life into a work of art. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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The underpainter
85% buy the item featured on this page:
The underpainter 5.0 out of 5 stars (3)
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The Stone Carvers 4.7 out of 5 stars (3)
£5.99

 

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Moving,compulsive and well-written, 17 Jun 2001
By hugueninf@bluewin.ch (Thun,Switzerland.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Underpainter (Paperback)
It's been a wet Saturday which gave me a good excuse to read this beautiful novel in one sitting.I'd never heard of Jane Urquhart but am now eager to read more of her work.Her landscapes and characters are vividly portrayed as their story draws us in.A novel which is absorbing,thought-provoking and a real page-turner.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful writing, tragic story, fabulous book, 13 Jun 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Underpainter (Paperback)
I simply couldn't believe how good this novel was. The quality of the writing, the spellbinding story, and the subject matter itself - so different from anything I've read before. It made me want to savour every word. Set in Canada and the northern USA in the decades between 1910 and 1940, it is told through the eyes of "the underpainter", a man who has squandered his opportunities for happiness and personal fulfilment - one could hardly call him the hero of the story. If the book has a hero, it is his friend, George, who paints pictures of quite a different kind.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Underpainter, 19 Mar 2006
This review is from: The Underpainter (Paperback)
The Underpainter is a riveting novel about an artist, whose defining trait, is to wash overtop what he originally painted, and paint over that, leaving only faint images, of what had been. In this novel, Jane Urquahart has painted the picture of an artist who is obsessed with painting,to the point of destroying both himself and those who care about him. I could not put this book down.
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